


Cassell's Magazine

by clearinghouse



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Bunny is Hornung, Earl's Court Era, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Smug Raffles, nervous bunny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 08:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11551284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clearinghouse/pseuds/clearinghouse
Summary: Bunny never asked Raffles what he thinks of “The Ides of March.” Raffles decides to tell him anyway.





	Cassell's Magazine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stickerbuccaneer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickerbuccaneer/gifts).



It was one of our duller days, of the monstrously dull setting of Earl’s Court. If that conveys nothing to you, I will add a quick explanation. It wouldn’t do for me to go about for one minute under the now-infamous name of AJ Raffles, known to one and all as the sportsman and thief in gentleman’s clothing. He was presumed to have met his death as fittingly and as a prematurely as every young devil of the type half-wished to, and I was finished the moment the wrong person grew wise to my real identity. So, I was faking at being a bath-chair patient instead, an unsociable old Australian of the meanest description. In humorous contrast to my popularity at the Albany, as an ill and cantankerous old man I gave out no social invitations, and received none in turn. My only associates were a doctor, who was an absolute tool, and my old partner, Bunny. 

Bunny lived with me in my unimpressive hiding place. I’d scooped him up from his sad hovel and his sadder circumstances, and given him a billet as my own male nurse. That’s quite a story of its own, by the way—I refer to the sequence of events that paved the way to our sweet reunion, after a miserable eternity spent apart, when each of us had to face the hardest trials and loneliness by himself—but that’s not what this small yarn is about. Take the above for granted as the prologue for now, if any of it comes as fresh news, and turn all attention to the present setup in the Earl’s Court rooms. 

Under my firm advice, my friend was flying under false colours, though not as false as mine. He was playing the part of a chap who had met too many unfortunate turns in life to be able to secure for himself any more desirable position. That was the impression he was compelled to sustain for the sake of my live-in doctor, who wasn’t in on our real identities. The only one who could be trusted enough with a fraction of the truth was Bunny.

My reliable rabbit was the only cohort a chap like me wanted. I hadn’t needed any luck when it came to finding him again, as soon as I was in a good enough place make a try for it. I had known where to find him: indeed, his track was everywhere to be found, because it was printed on paper. He had written some articles on how it is in gaol. It was a narrative, censored at the corners, one might suspect, for the sensibilities of the public, but in my mind I was sure, knowing my Bunny as well as I did, that I could still make out the omitted lines.

That he had pursued his old line of writing as his honourable career was to be expected. I’d always known him to be literary as a boy. He’d been elevated to editor for our school’s magazine, in fact, which was no small achievement, though that came after my time, and I only heard about it later, from other sources.

So, to search for and find an article of his in the newspaper was no great detective work. 

However, imagine my great astonishment and feeling when I dug deeper, and discovered through the wheedling into his editor, what else he had written in my absence: a memoir of one of our villainous escapades!

At present, the precious fruit of my labours was in my hands. It was a particular issue of Cassell’s Magazine, an unintended gift from Bunny’s editor. Having had the chance to peruse it already, I was schooling my features to maintain a pretence that the magazine was new to me. Sitting upright in bed in my blessed sickroom, where the one saving grace of the overwhelming sickly smell of medicine is that it obfuscates from the doctor’s prying nose the fumes of a surreptitious smoke, I was only biding my time until—

“He’s gone home, finally,” Bunny declared victoriously as he swept into the room. His hand was slow to leave the handle of the door, betraying the manner of a man accustomed to creeping about. “We have the place to ourselves.” In translation, this was to say that he were free to drink and to smoke without interruption. It was a fine situation, one that I silently agreed was very desirable. His first target was, naturally, the engraving hanging on the wall, until he remembered the recent rotation in my scheme of hiding places for my various contraband; then he went swiftly and successfully for the store of cigarettes concealed in the toes of one of my shoe cigarettes.

“Good,” I murmured disinterestedly, chin bowed to the magazine. 

It took him a few more moments to get around to the point of bringing a smoke to me (or possibly it was a drink; I did not know because I did not lift my gaze to see). “Raffles—” but he stopped talking, after he had turned to face me. 

“Listen to this, Bunny. ‘In the Chains of Crime,’” I quoted, evilly relaxed as I did so. “‘Being the Confessions of a late Prisoner of the Crown—’”

Finally, he realized what reading material I had chosen. Without seeing them, I felt Bunny’s eyes on me grow wide as saucers. It was an acute pleasure to hear him let out a startled gasp. His instincts to put an end to my game were, at least, quick to take hold, and childishly he jumped over at me, meaning to get my prize away from me. Equally childishly, I held him at bay with one hand, and continued.

“‘—and sometime accomplice of the more notorious AJ Raffles, Cricketer and Criminal,’” I savoured each of these two words with a special appreciation, “‘whose fate is unknown.’”

“Give me that!”

“I’m not sure that the illustration here of a gentleman chained and made helpless by a devilish ghoul in black cloak is really at all representative. You did give some complaint about it to the editor, no doubt.”

To be clear, Bunny could have confiscated the article from me, if he had tried with real effort to overpower me. A bedridden lifestyle will put anyone out of good form, to say nothing of the actual sacrifices I had made of my health over the years. And perhaps Bunny would not allow it if I said that he possesses some little physical strength of his own, but that was true as well, as many adventures of ours have borne out. He did not put it to use at this time.

I briefly forsook the object of my attention in order to enjoy the pretty, flummoxed sight he made. The embarrassment of the sensitive artist coloured his cheeks. It was plain that he both welcomed and feared what I would have to say upon his literary efforts. His struggle against my reach ceased, though figuratively he fought on.

“Mock me as you like,” he said gravely, receding. “It paid the bills.”

“I’m not about to mock you for anything,” I replied. Though I was far from dropping my playfulness completely, my heart did go out to him. “A writer only ever writes what he knows, or so I read somewhere, and that fact is no different in your case. And the subject’s a fine one, if you’ll forgive the conflict of interest. Isn’t it natural for a chap to fancy reading an account of his own exploits?”

Bunny fell listlessly into the chair by the bed. He was sullen, and quiet for a short time. “They insisted on the Chains of Crime bit,” he muttered in defeat. “That wasn’t mine. They wanted to make it clear from the outset what the moral of the story was.”

I didn’t like his little attempt to defend his work as if he were testifying at a trial, but for the moment I was distracted the rudeness of the implication that any record of his life was equal to a Grimm fairy tale, best fit to warn children of futures to avoid. 

“You know how it is,” he said, a touch more bravely and more passionately. “Nothing a writer like me puts down is above scratched lines or supplements in the margins.”

“I understand.” Impertinently, I slapped the mag. “I understand that they’ve watered my friend’s letters down for the sake of the masses. It’s all the better for them, sure, but all the worse for me, since they’ve robbed me of bits of the author’s genuine article. Tell me, how much of this is you, Bunny, and how much is them?”

His hands bunched into balls in his lap. “Most of it is my own.” There was a twitch of his head, as if shaking it in the negative to himself, but he only grimaced, and said nothing. He knew too well that, though he could wrench the paper from my hands, he could not change my mind, however much he wished to. 

“Come, now!” I cried. “You mustn’t be so worried, if indeed you are worried. You can’t still be ashamed of your prose, after all your years spent as a man of letters, can you? It’s true that I wouldn’t list creativity among your many talents, yet you’ve never failed to possess great accuracy of memory and sharpness of feeling. Your writing is a pleasure to read, Bunny; very unlike the slow, bloated penning of so many serials that always read as if they were paid for by the word, whether they were or they weren’t.”

A light dawned in my rabbit’s troubled eyes, and Bunny raised his gaze to me. Far from being encouraged or even nullified, however, he was starkly deadpan. “You’ve already read the whole thing, haven’t you?”

I’d been found out. I smiled, to soften the blow. “Once or twice, yes.” 

“Twice?” he repeated in alarm. “Then, this teasing—why, you’re playing a rotten trick with me, again!” These ghostly words echoed his own ghostly dialogue from his little chronicle, back when I’d tricked him into breaking into the bank with me.

The allusion earned from me a half-apologetic nod for my repeated offence. “I’ve not improved, I’m sorry to say. But I confess that I did enjoy surprising you back then.” The recollection was a fond one, for it was the seconds of his resigned yet determined expression as he gave himself over to the necessity and the thrill of our lifelong escapade, and steadfastly redoubled his trust in my doubly undeserving self. “I’ve never forgotten how you looked when you realized the real reason that I brought you round to Bond Street in the dead of night. Nor will I forget your look of surprise just now—”

“Raffles!” Bunny was even more startled and embarrassed than before. He was no longer a defendant in the heat of the courtroom; he became like a convicted man, one whose sentence had already been decided by a fearsome judge, but withheld and kept fatuously secret, until the fatal hour. “So you are having fun at my expense. Well! You are entitled to, I suppose. The thing is all about you. I have no moral ground against mockery from you. Even so—even so, this is unfair. You must know,” he protested with a burst of great emotion, “you must know that I never expected you to read any of the stories that I wrote about you!”

I frowned. This defensive streak of his was increasingly not to my liking. “Have I mocked you yet, Bunny? Do you think it probable,” I intimated calmly and candidly, “that I should be offended by your choice of subject, one which is so near to my heart, that is to say, the progression of how you and I became a team, or more than a team? Should I mock you,” I said with less calmness, “for your choice of inspiration, a choice which in itself is perhaps the greatest compliment another man ever paid me?”

My poor Bunny was flatly stymied. He stared at me. Perhaps he meant to say something in response, but faltered in the execution.

I flipped a few pages forward, and pinned a finger to a line a quarter of the way down the sheet. “Here, you exclaim to the reader that your fortunes have turned, now that your distant acquaintance, me, has taken the stance to be your friend in your time of crisis. Here, you don’t shy from sharing sensations of awe and relief, and, from the purely academic standpoint, this all passes mustard as a perfectly suspenseful and well-described scene. But what you’ve written is even more beautiful than that, of greater meaning to me—it is crammed full of your fearfully high regard for me, and if this story has one failing, Bunny, it is that you’ve not put in my regard for you, to compensate!”

My sudden passion left my friend in a state of astonishment. His shy face was sweetly stunned. That beautiful and trusting face encouraged me to continue, as it has done so many times in the past.

After a breath, my own emotions pushed through my throat and into existence; I was little more than a swimmer in the waterfall. “You exclaim to the reader,” I said, “that I’ve become your friend, and therefore all is saved, or will be saved; but I submit to you that there might have been another paragraph to follow that train of thought. This extra paragraph would have added that I, too, had gained a friend, one who I sorely needed. We were both hard-up then, as you very accurately illustrate, and in my little society’s circle there was no other person I could trust as a helper. I needed someone to be my night watchman. More importantly, I needed someone I could rely on—someone in the world to have my back! It wasn’t just the night’s job I had in mind when I signed you up, Bunny; from the beginning, I wanted you for the long haul. You trusted me, heaven knows why, but I also trusted you, because I was sure that I knew my rabbit from the old days. I knew that, no matter what comes, you were always on my side then, and you always would be.” I breathed again, sharply. “A paragraph like that would go far to compensate your devotion to me, I think!”

The processing in his brain played out like a drama in his bright eyes, while I looked once more to meet them. He fell into happiness and sadness at once. “But,” he struggled to say, “I couldn’t have known all that.” The words were whispered, hardly a noise at all.

“Do you know it now?” I let the magazine slide from my grasp to rest somewhere beside me. Precious it was, but my friend was the more precious, and the more deserving of my attention. I crawled to the edge of the bed, across from where he sat amazed in his chair that was pulled up close. The next moment, I thought of how soft and cute his blushing cheeks were in my hands. The moment after that, all my deepest, truest opinions of my friend seized control of my every muscle, and my every thought. I leaned forward, angled my head to his, and kissed him unabashedly.

My partner melted handsomely into a fair puddle at my touch. However, I should not say that he melted. Cradling my dear Bunny is an event that goes above the classic folktale ending—the part when the hero owns the damsel with a kiss, and the damsel swoons like melted butter. Bunny does not swoon, and he never loses his secret reservoir of strength to my will, however much determination and affection I rain down on him. That was how he was at this instant, too: strong, and responsive. His hands rose to shape my sides. His lips were as fond of mine as the reverse. 

He was more tender than the most chivalrous gentleman, more infinitely caring of me that I ever deserved. I deepened my kiss, so that I can hear him moan, and know that it was my touch that had made him moan. There was a profound sense of relief in his eagerness, and that was no surprise; he must have been immensely relieved to learn what I had thought of his written portrait of me. He really ought not to put so much stock in my views as he did, but if this state of affairs afforded me the delicious power of seducing him to this blissful state with my praise, then who was I to revolt against nature? We held and tasted one another, promising our deathless loyalty to one another and delighting in the pleasure of it. I began to recede from him coquettishly, to make space for him on the bed with me, and without delay he accepted this wordless invitation, making up for my retreat with a easy advance of his own. As the soft weight of his knees sank the sheets at their edge, so did the soft weight of his lips press on me.

Eventually my heart was too achingly full of affection, and the waterfall of emotions returned to relieve some of the pressure. 

I laid my forehead to his. “Bunny,” I said, “anyone who reads this will never know how glad I was that you gave your troubles up to me that night. That came after you were so closed and distant during the game of baccarat, and I was given to understand that you wanted nothing more to do with me. I did sympathize with your hardships, when I learned the truth of them, but that was not the only emotion I entertained. It was very bad of me, to rejoice in an old friend falling into hard times—but damn me, I was glad for it, as well!”

“Why were you glad?” It was a simple question, not angry, only curious.

I marvelled at how inoffensively he had just received my offensive confession. The blow of his kindness was like a sharp twist inside me; I was sure that I was more impressed by him, and more grateful for him, than I could ever say. “That is a question that I should be asking you,” I diverted. His gentle, smaller hands were swiftly taken and captured by my harsher set. “Why were you so glad to have me sign on as your friend? It wasn’t for your chance at my generosity, or you would have given me up the second I told you that I had no money after all.”

He blinked at this. Evidently, he had long ago forgotten to care about what amount of money I had. “I was glad because I’m not afraid of anything,” he answered, slowly, in the style of coming to the answer in his own mind as he spoke, “while I’ve got you.”

The blood in my chest went pounding. Juvenile this response might have been, yet all the same, that was my response. My limbs were lighter than air. It was a rush, a leave of all my senses through my body, up and out the head, to know that he endowed such prodigious faith in me. “Then, I was glad, because my old friend had finally returned to me. I knew I wouldn’t be alone in my track again.” I released his hands, so that an affirming pat could secure itself strongly onto the bicep of the man sitting in front of me. “Not while I’ve got a good partner at home.”

Bunny’s returning show of affection was much less subdued. Before I knew what had come over him, he enthusiastically shot forward and kissing me, not recklessly, but softly and purposefully, the same flavour of the sweet sentiments brewing inside him and me. His fear of mockery from me was all gone. He was lovely; I wanted even more of him, and he obliged my desire, embracing me and pinning me to lie down flat on the same too-familiar mattress in which I daily fabricated my arduous pretense as some young doctor’s resident patient. I was on my back beneath Bunny, subjected to his kisses and twining of his legs and elbows with mine. I rather liked this setup, and so I allowed him to keep the advantage of me like this for a while.

“If you had put any more of your honest feeling into these memoirs,” I murmured, stroking his clothed upper thigh suggestively, “it might have given rise to some telling rumours about us.”

Bunny harrumphed indignantly into my collarbone. “I’m not so careless as to let any of this slip through.” 

“Quite, I think not. Although, it might make for a more exciting story,” I laughed, and my dear friend kindly tolerated the stab at coarse humour with a forgiving smirk. “No, no, I’m afraid you are right.”

There was a comfortable silence. Then, Bunny whispered in a reverent tone, “You really liked the thing, AJ?”

“Hm? Oh, yes, I liked it.” This seemed rather weak, so I endeavoured to conjure up some more well-thought criticism. “It was well how you managed to convey,” I said at last, “the thrill of a crime that was, I admit, not itself rife with action. And I’m quite satisfied with how you’ve captured me. I do not feel that I have been slandered in the least.”

Bunny hugged me about my chest in a relaxed way, as though he planned to fall asleep on top of me. “Thank you,” he said, to the space of the room that he was presently facing. He had spoken with a gravity that made me feel the weight of its significance to him. “I won’t write any more of them, obviously,” he took care to add.

Obviously, given that no sensible criminal could be vain enough to choose to have his moments published while he was still at large. Yet it seemed an unfortunate loss, and I’ll be the first one to admit to the presence of a certain adamant stroke of vanity in my blood. “No? Ah, but you could write them now, yet not to be published for another hundred years or so. It will hardly matter to the future constabulary what fun we ancients got up to, yet historians pop up for every field eventually, and the ones in our line will appreciate the extra archive. Besides that, I know how much you enjoy writing, when it’s for the writing’s sake.”

He gave an endearing, long-suffering snort. Good fellow, he knew exactly what my driving motive was. “Even if that were true,” he retorted, “I’m not sure how it’ll go to your head, if I were to go on spinning tales about your exploits.”

“That’s a chance you would have to take. It’s no secret that I would be glad if you wrote more of us again. I think that you will, eventually. In fact, I daresay, what I’m saying this very moment might make it to your typewriter someday. Oh, or is this very moment too indiscreet?” I confess that I only remembered this last condition when I observed Bunny’s head-tilt of amusement.

“Too indiscreet,” he agreed. His caressing hands along my upper body in the direction of my hips happily proved his point. “Besides, there isn’t enough action. A story wants conflict. This wouldn’t be interesting to read about.”

“Is that so? Why don’t you make up a row between us, then, and throw that in? Instead of the snogging, you might say that you were struggling to keep me from having a swing at you. Make it some disagreement over some woman. That will add an element of romantic intrigue to the story, too, and I’ll be blowed if your reading public is not the sort to eat that drivel up! Love triangles are just the thing to make anything a bestseller.”

“No, I don’t think so. I couldn’t bring myself to write anything like that!” But Bunny’s entertained smile was evident in his lively voice.

I wasn’t prepared to admit defeat yet. The image of Bunny at his writing desk, jotting down more of his soul into fantastical records of our joint misdeeds, appealed too strongly to me. “Well, what if you wrote for me alone?” I asked, in a half-sardonic voice that half-veiled my real desire for his work. It was a force of habit of mine to speak in this indirect fashion, unnecessary though it surely was. “I, at least, would find the insight of the narrator’s thoughts very interesting.”

“I’m sure you would.” He countered my blatant teasing with his own. “You already know my opinions of you. But would you genuinely want to read the unchanging news of it rewritten a hundred times?”

“I can never hear it too many times,” I replied. In order to have the last word on this subject, I threw him off it by spinning onto him, so that I was on top of him, and kissing and cuddling him once more. The feel of him was warm and inviting, like how one’s home ought to feel like.

The forgotten magazine by my arm was laid to the last page, and without meaning to I briefly caught sight of the last line, rounding out the ending in which Bunny and I exchange praises of satisfaction and promises of loyalty. ‘And that is how Raffles and I joined felonious forces on the Ides of March,’ it declared. I appreciated the phraseology of the sentence. We had joined forces; we were two villains, one no better than the other. Master I might be over tricks and nerves, yet in the essentials—that is to say, affinity and faithfulness—we were one.

On my hands and knees above him, I grinned down at that sweet, never-fading look of innocence of his. “It’s Theobald’s day off and therefore ours as well, and it’s put me in a lazy mood. I don’t see what I need to leave this bed for.” In accordance with the indulgent lethargy of these words, I let myself fall sluggishly on top of him. For a long and sunny moment, I merely luxuriated in the feel of his chest as it served as a very agreeable little bed for my head, a position that seemed to suit him favorably as well. Then, I continued airily, “I have a splendid idea. Why don’t you read some of that magazine to me, while I lie here and listen?”

“Read it to you?” His light eyebrows jumped to their limit. “But you’ve already read it!”

“I didn’t say I was obliging you to read aloud your own little contribution. I’ll be kind, and give you your choice of any of the stories in that rag. On the other hand,” I drawled like the devil, “if you happened to choose the notorious ‘Chains of Crime,’ you may be certain that your audience will be a good authority on whether or not you are able to mimic the two voices faithfully.”

Bunny’s expression was amazed, and befuddled, until the whole combination broke down into an adorably nervous laughter, which he tried and failed to smother. Pitilessly, I elbowed myself up and smacked the magazine onto his chest. I dared him with clever smirk and narrow eyes to take it; and still laughing, still nervous and adorable, at length he took it.

End.


End file.
